by Anna Eluvae
"There's a mundane explanation," said Dravus. "The Iron Kingdom might have just made those men we fought famous through the usual means. Pay enough bards and it's possible, right?"
"Now is not the time for skepticism, Lightscour," said Lexari.
"It's just an explanation," said Dravus. "I didn't mean anything by it."
"It doesn't matter," said Nemm. "What matters is how many illustrati they can field using whatever method they have. Our current guess, based on what we've seen, is five or six. Four of them are dead. I doubt that they would reveal everyone at once though. There's also an upper limit to the number that they could possibly have. If they had hundreds, they could simply have forced a surrender through brute strength alone."
"If they — the Council or the Iron Kingdom — have the ability to create illustrati from whole cloth, stopping them takes precedence over protecting Torland," said Lexari.
The room went silent for a moment as that declaration sank in.
"You would abandon this kingdom to its own devices?" asked Nemm.
"If need be," said Lexari. "If someone has found a way to upset the current balance of fame against power, or worse yet has grabbed onto the source of power by its root, then we're speaking of the end of the world as we know it."
"Does this change your proposed course of action?" asked Nemm. She laid her hands on the table and spread them wide. "Does this materially alter what we need to do? If it's a matter of calling in the Zenith and leaving shore, then I would have to disagree. Whatever is happening is happening here, now. We need to expose the link between the Council and the Iron Kingdom, if one exists."
"We'll stay in Torland," said Lexari. "For now."
"If they did use a Harbinger Artifact, or Harbinger knowledge," said Dravus. "Is it possible that the Iron Kingdom wasn't involved at all?"
"Possible," said Lexari. He rubbed at his bald head. "But of course that raises the question of where they would have gotten such things."
"We're going in circles," said Nemm. "I'll ask again, what do we know for a fact?"
"There are three sides," said Dravus. "Or possibly two. The enemy has resources, to some extent, and those resources might exist outside the context of what we know. The enemy has a goal of some kind, which we are mostly ignorant of. They have plans, which we have so far ran straight into with open arms. Because we don't know what they're planning, we can't formulate a response, unless that response is defensive. Going on the defense leaves us weak."
"Well said," replied Lexari. He was intently gazing at Dravus. Dravus couldn't read the expression.
"We need to start talking peace," said Nemm. "We need to sober up the queen for long enough to get her talking to the Council of Laborers, or whoever speaks for them. If the queen won't do it, we need to give her husband the spine to act in her stead."
"You must speak more carefully in their presence," said Lexari.
Nemm rolled her eyes. "I am a queen, in case you had forgotten. I have leeway."
They left their meeting room and walked down the hallways of Grayhull Palace. Last night, while they had been out saving the city from rogue illustrati and enormous fires, many members of the Flower Queen's court had been having a celebration of sorts, and the palace was more or less devoid of illustrati as many of them were in their rooms nursing a hangover. Dravus had only gotten four hours of sleep, and desperately wanted more, but there was no reason to suspect that the enemy would relent, even with the loss of four of their members.
Nemm and Lexari seemed to be in some disagreement about the significance of those four. In some sense, it had been an even trade between the royalists and the Council; both sides had lost four. That was more than could be hoped for when the enemy had prepared an ambush. In another sense, the whole thing might have been avoided if they had gone about the work of quelling the riots and putting out the fires as though they were already at war. It wouldn't have done their side any favors to be seen in a tight cluster with heavy armor and drawn weapons, but it would likely have prevented the deaths.
"They're calling them the Phoenixes," said Darkheart when they got to the throne room. The Flower Queen was nowhere to be seen, and the throne itself was empty, with Darkheart sitting to the side of it. It wasn't clear whether he had been waiting for them, or just using the wide open space to think.
"Who, your Royal Highness?" asked Lexari.
"The common folk," said Darkheart. "The story being passed around is that Kendrick Eversong has gone to the heavens, and his music so stirred the gods that they began granting extraordinary powers to the Blood Bard's friends. They were given power over fire because they acted justly in starting those fires. The Vicar Most High is quite displeased by this development. He actually suggested to me that we should start hanging people for heresy. There are bankers who lost their fortunes in the fires, with whole ledgers of accounts having irrecoverably gone up in smoke, and while the city has mostly settled, it seems certain that there will be riots again tonight." He spread his hands with his palms up. "My queen would like a solution to these problems."
"If there were a way to find Kendrick," Nemm began.
"They're having a funeral later today," said Darkheart. "Thank god the spies are still bringing information back to the palace. Kendrick's body will be on display for everyone to see."
Dravus considered that as Nemm swore. It would be possible to fake, if you could gather the bodily domains together to alter the appearance of an existing corpse. Wenaru had compared the subtle alterations that could be made to a person's face as a form of art, and to do it properly would require three or four illustrati who were artists in their own right.
"Gael, are you certain that you did nothing to the Blood Bard?" asked Darkheart.
"I," began Wenaru. "Your Royal Highness, I would never. I was going to heal him of his wounds, to prevent his death. When I touched him, he did something with his blood, enough to cause damage I wouldn't have been able to fix. It was as though he broke a dam within himself. I thought he had killed himself." He paused. "I'm not entirely certain that he didn't."
"I'm afraid that's no longer enough," said Darkheart.
"Don't do anything foolish," said Lexari, but even as the words were leaving his mouth, guards were entering the throne room.
"The situation has grown far beyond your control," said Darkheart. "A cynical man might believe that a trial was only meant to appease, but not all men are cynics. I am sorry, Wenaru, that it has come to this."
Dravus was ready to form a blade of shadows, but one look at Nemm and Lexari told him that this wasn't the course of action that either of them planned to take. The guards weren't illustrati; they were there primarily for symbolic reasons. Even though his injuries hadn't healed, Lexari could have killed all of them without breaking a sweat by twirling his spear around and piercing straight through their armor. Nemm could likely have done something similar. Dravus primed the shadows all the same, giving his focus to the shape that he might need.
"What charges does Wenaru face?" asked Lexari.
"Murder," said Darkheart.
"Please," said Wenaru.
"You understand that we have no desire to be outlaws in your land," said Lexari.
"There will be a trial," said Darkheart. "A fair one. We should have set this in motion before, but we bowed to your threats. If you had found a better solution to our problems, this could have been avoided. The trial can be announced before the Blood Bard's funeral begins."
Lexari hesitated.
"Take him down to the dungeon," Darkheart said to the guards. "Give him everything that he wants; it is possible that the trial will end in his favor, and an innocent man shouldn't suffer too much from having suspicion cast on him."
Wenaru looked to Lexari, but Lexari averted his eyes.
* * *
"It's a response," said Nemm. "Not a good one, but it's proactive in a way that I wouldn't have expected from him." They sat at one end of a long dinner table, eating strips of sl
iced beef on top of a bed of root vegetables.
"Even our allies are enemies," said Lexari. He rested his face in his palm, and looked far older than Dravus had ever seen him look before.
"He was trying to define himself," said Dravus. He looked to Nemm. "By how he responded to strife and pressure."
"What is the story here?" asked Lexari, as though Dravus had said nothing. "What is the shape of it? An enemy two steps ahead of us isn't so strange. The reappearance of Harbinger artifacts is something that I've long expected. What resolution do we bring to this issue with Wenaru though? What story are we completing?"
"You're tired," said Nemm. "We all are." The bulk of her glass armor was sitting in two halves on the floor beside her, ready to be put on at a moment's notice. Dravus could see her age too, and the exhaustion that marked her face. Nemm was nearly thirty years old, but it was rare that she looked it.
"Wenaru needs to be exonerated," said Dravus. "That's the story."
"How?" asked Lexari. His voice was faintly suspicious.
Dravus licked his lips. His first inclination was to lie; they could falsify some proof, in the same way that the supposed crime itself had been falsified. But the more he looked at Lexari, the more he knew that Nemm was right; there were certain things that Lexari would rather have done away from his sight so that he could play the hero. The shape of the story was different, depending on whether the exoneration was done in good faith or as a lie.
"What was Kendrick like in private?" asked Dravus. He looked between the two of them. "You both knew him, didn't you?"
"He wanted to be an illustrati more than anything," said Lexari. "He was driven by a relentless sense of self. His desire for fame eclipsed all other desires; that was what made him a bad person. He would have killed, if he thought that it would get him to the top. He would have — he did — cheat, lie, and steal, most noticeably from us."
"You're casting him as a villain," said Dravus. "But people liked him. They must have had a reason to, and it wasn't all lies." He turned to Nemm. "He was flippant, wasn't he? And overly dramatic? Was he actually that way, or was that just an act?"
"Those were things he chose to accentuate," said Nemm. She frowned. "I don't see where you're going with this."
"What I'm saying is," Dravus began. He looked to Lexari. "Can I speak with Nemm privately?"
Lexari's eyes narrowed. Without a word, he got up from his chair, taking his plate of food with him, and walked out the door.
"Inelegant," said Nemm. "If you wanted to speak with me privately, you should have done so before raising those questions."
"Was the Blood Bard in love with you?" asked Dravus. He saw her raise an eyebrow and continued on ahead. "It doesn't actually matter, we can say that he was, I was just wondering whether there was some deeper history."
"You're hatching a plot," said Nemm. "And yes, of course he was in love with me. He tried to woo me whenever we made port. Some of the songs he wrote about my beauty are still sung today, though of course that's not what I would prefer to be known for. And yes, he had a flair for the dramatic, even when we were in private. It was a shield he put up, between himself and the world."
"He left a letter for you," said Dravus. He tried to put some authority into his voice. "He knew that there was going to be a chance that he would be betrayed, so he arranged for a letter to be delivered to you in case something happened to him. The letter would prove that Wenaru was innocent, and point a finger at the Council."
Nemm stared at Dravus. "Any particular reason that people would believe this?"
"There will have to be something damaging to us," said Dravus. "How damaging — how true — will be something for you to supply. We can tell them that the entire duel was staged. He did trick us; it's reasonable that he would want to gloat. All we need to do is undermine his martyrdom and deflate the Council's righteous anger."
"I can see why you wouldn't want to speak of this in front of Lexari," said Nemm. "He would never agree to it."
"But you would?" asked Dravus. "If there are problems with this plan, outside the moral ones … we're using a lie to erase other lies. If Kendrick is still alive, he won't be able to come out of the shadows without proving that the whole thing was a sham in the first place, and given how tarnished our reputation already is in this place, I think on balance we still come out ahead."
"It's a good enough plan," said Nemm. "Assuming that we can find a printing press, we can have copies of Kendrick's letter flooding through the city." She pushed her plate of food forward. "Composition will be the difficult part."
* * *
Dearest Nemm,
If you are reading this, then I am dead. I've always wanted to send a letter from beyond the grave, and I hope that you will forgive me for the melodrama. Dead men are allowed some leeway in such matters. Writing such a letter is supremely morbid, but the domain of blood lends itself to morbidity. This is not the first such letter I've written. I hope that it is not the first that gets delivered, but of course I wouldn't be writing if I didn't think there was a chance.
There are many reasons to compose such a letter. It is almost always a form of insurance. Sometimes the contents may be known to your rivals, and help to ensure that they have less incentive to do as they might otherwise do. That requires a fair amount of existing leverage, but at the same time ensures a lasting mistrust. In my case, however, it is a form of spite. I have been with this Council of Laborers for a long time, and my spite is directed at them only in the case that they decide to kill me. Personally, I can understand why they would. After the duel, I will have played my part.
I was anxious when I saw that Lexari had been injured, and puzzled when Lightscour stepped forward. It would have sunk our plans entirely. You can't imagine how happy I was when you came in through my bedroom window and tried to get in my good graces. When you proposed that we rig the match, I could barely keep from laughing. The plan leapt straight back onto its track; pretend to take a wound, pretend to require healing, pretend to be killed by that monster. It took me some time to work out why you would ask. You love Dravus de Luca. It was clear on your face in subsequent meetings. You, who had never loved a man, who had let countless have their way with you, had fallen in love with what amounts to a puppy. You might think that I would be jealous, but I recalled the stories of what you did to puppies. You were always a dangerous friend to have. If you're reading this letter, that unfortunately means that I won't be around to see the spectacular conclusion. How much of it would reach my ears? Perhaps just a single line of a song written hundreds of miles away. Lightscour, shattered like glass at the bottom of a ravine, and that would be the only hint that you had grown tired of him.
You're still wondering about the spite. You never did know how to be properly wounded by an insult. It was always about base pragmatism with you. Very well. I write to name the Council of Laborers as my executioners. If I had known which of them was going to kill me, I would simply avoid my death. They are the ones to gain from ending my life though. It doesn't take the cleverest bard in all of Torland to recognize that. I'll admit to putting myself in a dangerous position. It seemed for the best, at the time, but I write that as a living man only pretending at being a dead one. Perhaps if I actually die I'll feel differently.
I won't ask for you to avenge me. I imagine that you're going to cut through the ranks of the Council of Laborers regardless of my wishes. Violence was always your preferred solution to any problem. You will have your work cut out for you, but by the time this letter reaches you, you'll already know as much as I do. If I had lived — and this letter being in your hands means that I did not — I would be bound for the rolling hills of Lerabor to start a new life.
I loved you, Nemm. But you knew that.
Nemm looked over the letter a third time. It took two full pages of paper, in somewhat cramped script.
"I don't like the ambiguity," she said. "I wish we knew more. As it stands, we're not changing the narrative enough. If
we knew where the Phoenixes came from, we would have a better weapon."
"If," said Dravus with a shrug. "We don't know, so we can't say. It saves Wenaru, and that should be enough." Nemm seemed unimpressed by this line of logic. "Would Kendrick have been so cryptic about what was happening?"
"Absolutely," said Nemm. "He'd take joy in it. He was always joyful, even when he was being mysterious."
"Then we're ready?" asked Dravus.
"I suppose," said Nemm.
Lexari had been meeting with the Flower Queen and Darkheart, in order to work out the details of Wenaru's trial. The excuse they'd given him had been a flimsy one; Dravus had wanted to ask Nemm indelicate questions about her relationship with the Blood Bard. Once the letter came forward, it was impossible that Lexari wouldn't figure out that they'd been the ones to forge it — but then, perhaps he would choose not to pull that thread. At the moment, Dravus and Nemm were supposed to be out in the city, traveling incognito and gathering information. Instead, they'd found a quiet part of the palace and sat down to write. They would leave later on, and come back empty-handed, and it was doubtful that anyone was tracking their movements too closely. This was their fourth draft of the letter, and Dravus still thought that it wasn't quite right, but he had met Kendrick on only two occasions, and those had been performances for the public.
